A Strange and Ancient Name (30 page)

“Hauberin,” Alliar said gently, “you were hardly in any condition to be rational.”

“I wasn’t imagining it.”

“Why should this alien magician-or-whatever hate you?”

“I . . .” Hauberin waved a helpless hand. “I don’t know. But I had a strange dream—”

“When?” the being asked skeptically. “While you were delirious?”

“It wasn’t just a fever-dream! I spoke with a very real presence, mind to mind, someone or something truly alien, truly hating, that wanted me dead. That . . . had already killed my parents.”

“Ach, Hauberin,” the being murmured. “Come, sit down.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“And don’t snap at me. We may never learn how Prince Laherin died, but it was illness that killed your poor mother; there are enough witnesses to swear to that. And it was iron-poisoning that created your dream. Remember when you were feverish from
seralis?
You were convinced an assassin was in the room.”

“I’d forgotten.” Hauberin stretched, warily. “Ae-yi, maybe you’re right,” he admitted reluctantly. “Maybe it
was
all in my mind.”

“Of course it was.”

“Speaking of which, I’ll have to do something to reestablish the royal image in the minds of my people.”

“Reestablish?” Alliar laughed. “My dear prince, you are the first ruler in recorded history to have survived iron-poisoning. Right now your people are in awe of you!’

“Oh, indeed? We’ll see how long that lasts.” But Hauberin couldn’t hold back a grin.

###

Matilde stood in her pink-pearl walled bedchamber before a mirror rimmed with silver (the royal metal, she knew that now, with its ties to moon and magic; gold, sun-metal that it was, was unknown here), and stared at the unfamiliar face staring back: pale from the lack of sun, yet as aglow with health as any true Faerie face; red-flame hair unbound save for a band of bright green silk; eyes . . . oh, the eyes were the strangest, wild and wide, full of joy and knowledge that had nothing to do with the merely human . . .

But I
am
human,
she remembered with a shock.
Pretend though I might, ache for this land as if it was my homeland though I do, I
—
am—just
—
human.

The image in the mirror was blurring. Matilde turned sharply away, brushing tears from her eyes with a brusque hand. God, how she wanted to stay here. How she wanted to
belong!
But it was impossible, it was foreign (she would
not
say “Godless”, for all that there were no churches here and folk never called on holy names), all foreign.

Ah, but the wonder she’d seen and heard and felt . . . magic shining in the very air, waiting to be shaped (shaped like the first illusion she’d cast, hardly knowing what she did, too overcome by Power’s demand to be used to be afraid, a flame-red bird, and she standing, head craned back, watching it soar up and up, as delighted as a child); the elegant, fierce, quicksilver-fancied folk, perilous and proud, swift to rage or laugh, to dance, to sing—oh, their music, the wondrous music, sharp as pain, beautiful as joy, feeding the lonely places in her soul, and all of it feeling, somehow, totally
right . .
.

The one thing she had never dared do was leave the palace grounds; Matilde knew with a strange, calm certainty that once she set foot on Faerie soil, felt the pull of it calling to her,
find your heartland, cling to it,
she would never, ever be able to leave.

“Matilde?”

Matilde turned with a start, struggling to keep her face impassive. “Aydris. I didn’t hear you enter.”

Aydris perched on the edge of an ivory-backed chair like a pretty, slightly plump bird with pastel blue feathers, and Matilde smiled in spite of herself. She liked Aydris, who, for all her Faerie whims and magics, hadn’t a drop of malice to her.

But Aydris, like all her race, was swift to catch disturbed emotion. “My dear, what is it? You’re not pining for mortal lands?” Her quick smile was bright with mischief. “Or is it Hauberin for whom you pine? Believe me, I’m not a rival; the prince and I have shared joy now and again, yes, but we’re friends more than lovers. So if you—”

“No!” Matilde could feel herself blushing; try though she would, she couldn’t accept the casual Faerie attitude towards matters sexual. “I’m a married woman, and I—I . . . Aydris, how long have I been here?”

The slanted green eyes all at once were opaque, alien. “Not yet long enough,” Aydris replied evasively.

“How
long? A day? A year?” Horrified, Matilde realized she’d lost all track of time as surely as any poor fool in a fairyland ballad.
And I didn’t once have the wit to worry about it!
“Aydris, please! How long?”

“Poor thing. Look in the mirror again. Reassure yourself; you haven’t aged.”

Even knowing nothing could have changed from a few moments ago, Matilde still had to look, heart racing with the irrational panic she might somehow suddenly find herself hopelessly old. But as she stared into the clear glass, human and Faerie memories overlapped confusingly. Her mind saw Gilbert’s face beside her own, her mind heard his voice pleading,
Don’t forget your mortal life. You are my wife. Please, please, remember me.

“Oh, God.” Matilde buried her face in her hands as memories of her human life, her human responsibilities, drowned all else. How could she have forgotten . . . ?

She straightened slowly. “It was Hauberin’s doing.”

Aydris blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s why I’ve been so mindlessly content. Hauberin bespelled me. I’ve been under his enchantment all this while.”

“Why, Matilde! Do you really think he’d do something like that?”

No. Dear saints, no, never.

Yet with her new
feel
for Power, there could be no denying the truth. And that meant everything she’d felt, all the joy and wonder, had been a sham. “Damn him! Oh, d-damn him!”

“Matilde! Wait!”

But Matilde was already storming out into the palace corridors to find the prince, wide-eyed servants scampering out of her way, courtiers staring, whispering after her, “It had to happen eventually. The human’s gone mad.”

“You, guards!” she snapped. “Where is the prince?”

“Here,” murmured a weary voice.

Matilde whirled. Hauberin, clad in somber blue tunic and hose, was watching her quietly, tired eyes deeply shadowed. A corner of her mind rejoiced that not much time had elapsed after all, because even though he’d abandoned the silken sling, he was still treating his arm with obvious care.

“Hauberin, I—”

“You’ve broken my spell, I see. No, wait, before you explode, come out here into the garden where we can speak in private. And please,” he added with wan humor, “don’t shout.”

The garden was small as a cloister in her own world, open to the sky and heady with the rich scent of the pure white Faerie roses. Hauberin sank to a marble bench and gestured to her to sit. She did, stiffly, beginning, “How could you—”

“Bespell you? Ah, Matilde . . . please believe me, I never meant to hurt you in any way. The only excuse I can offer for what I did is that I wasn’t thinking too clearly
yet,
and I . . . couldn’t find any other way to protect you.”

“Protect me?”

“I repeat, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“But everything I saw and did, everything I felt was a
lie!”

“Lies are foreign to Faerie,” he reminded her softly. “Whatever you felt was real enough; the spell did nothing more than relax your mind.”

“To the point of childishness! Hauberin, why? Why in God’s name did you think I needed protecting?”

“I wasn’t sure I could safely send you home. The times of our two Realms run at different speeds, even as the stories say. I suppose what I was trying to do was make it easier for you to accept living here.”

“Are you saying you
can’t
send me home?”

“I’m saying it would involve definite risk. But I had no right to make the decision for you.”

“Oh. Well.” If there was anything more frustrating than having the props of one’s anger kicked out from one . . . “Then . . .”

“At any rate,” Hauberin continued wearily,
“I
must return to your Realm. It seems that Serein’s curse really has outlived him.”

“The . . . ah . . . recurring dream?”

“Oh, yes. I must go kin-hunting once more.” His gaze was steady. “I give you your choice, lady. If you wish to stay and make a new life here, I will deed you the late Charailis’ estates. You shall not want.”

“And if I go back?”

The prince shook his head. “I can make no promises.”

Matilde clenched her teeth, fighting the urge to burst into tears.
I
can’t decide, how can I decide . . . ?
Now I know what Lady Eve felt when she and Lord Adam were cast out of Eden . . .
“I . . . can’t stay,” she said at last. “I can’t. Hauberin, while I was bespelled, I didn’t need to remember who and what I was. I didn’t need to be afraid of magic, or witch-burnings. I only just barely remembered I’m a married woman. I don’t want to go back—”

“Why then, stay and—”

“No. I
am
married. And the last thing I recall from human lands
is
that my husband is missing. How could I possibly stay here and never know if I was wife or widow?” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Gilbert’s been kind to me. I can’t abandon him now.”

“So be it. I’ll just gather Alliar, and some more . . . ah . . . human clothing for us. And then . . .” Hauberin paused, then reached out to quickly touch her cheek. “And then, my brave Matilde, we shall leave.”

To her shock, the quick caress sent shivers running through her. She stared deeply into the dark, weary, bemused eyes and thought,
Oh dear God, no, I can’t, this can’t . . .

As though aware of her confusion, Hauberin turned sharply away. “My word on it, I will do my best to return us to your rightful time and place.”

Whatever that may be,
Matilde added in despair.

XXIV

RETURN

Hauberin staggered, dazed by the sudden transition, the sudden loss of Power and—as in his first crossing of Realms—equally sudden rush of strength, feeling free from fatigue for the first time since his wounding. Matilde and Alliar, clad in Faerie approximations of human clothing, had safely made the crossing, too, every bit as dazed, the prince felt, as he. Hauberin glanced warily about, seeing bushes, grass, the dim gray light of early day in a mortal Realm—and directly ahead, the massive bulk of a castle . . .
 

Baron Gilbert’s castle.

Ae, Matilde! Suddenly totally aware, terrified of what he might see, Hauberin turned to stare at her so fiercely she stared back at him in horror, stammering, “W-What? What is it?”

Giddy with relief, Hauberin grinned. “Nothing. There’s not been the slightest change in you. This is your own home Realm and time.”

She laughed, stopped, laughed again. “I knew you could do it. I didn’t doubt for a moment.”

“Now, that,” teased Alliar, once more in human-male guise, “is as blatant an example of human falsehood as I’ve heard.”

The being had spoken in the Faerie tongue. Matilde blinked in confusion.

“I—I can’t understand you,” she said in the human tongue, alarm sharpening her voice. “And I feel . . . odd.”

“Ah, don’t worry,” Hauberin soothed. “The language-spell can only work in Faerie. And the ‘odd’ sensation is this magic-weak Realm’s way of squelching any Power not its own.”

He saw from her lonely eyes that she already rued the need to leave Faerie.
Honor and necessity,
he thought,
twin flails to drive us on.
“Come. We’ve landed close to your husband’s castle.”
Amazingly close; I probably couldn’t do it again in a hundred tries.

Alliar grinned. “It’s nearly morning, too. How charming. We can be the baron’s first callers of the day.”

But as they neared the castle in the gradually brightening light, Matilde stopped, eyes widening with shock. “That’s not Gilbert’s standard, it’s Raimond’s! No, I’m not mistaken; see, the field is very instead of azure, green instead of blue. Dear God, where is my husband . . . ?”

The portcullis had not yet been raised. Alliar, hands on hips, bellowed up to the guards in the twin watchtowers, “Ho, you, I know you see us! Let us in!”

Matilde stepped out of shadow. “You know me,” she called. “I am Baron Gilbert’s wife. Enough of this! Let us enter.”

Hauberin could hear the amazed murmurings from where he stood. Now, what . . . ? There was a long, long pause, and then the portcullis went clanking up. “About time,” Matilde muttered, and strode boldly forward. Hauberin and Alliar followed more slowly, the prince no more comfortable passing under the spiked gate than he had been the first time, half-healed iron-wounds throbbing in response to all that iron.

But then Matilde’s brave steps faltered and stopped, and the prince hurried to her side.

Two men stood in the courtyard. One, tall and blond, could only be Raimond . . . but a Raimond strangely changed. The childish wildness was gone from him, and a new maturity was evident in body, stance and eyes. The man beside him was younger, stocky and broad-shouldered, his freckled face pleasant rather than handsome, somehow familiar, yet not quite—

“Aimery!” Hauberin gasped, even as Aimery returned, “My Lord Hauberin! But how—”

“—could you have grown to manhood and—”

“—how,” Matilde asked Raimond weakly, “could you have changed so much in only a few days . . . ?”

“A few days!” Raimond echoed. “Matilde, I don’t know where you’ve been and how it is you don’t look a moment older, but you weren’t vanished for only ‘a few days’.”

“You’ve been gone for ten full years.”

###

“. . . and that,” Raimond concluded, “was the last time I ever saw my brother, that night when all hell literally seemed to tear loose.”

They were sitting in the room that had once been Baron Gilbert’s solar, all save the visiting Aimery, who had politely excused himself. Matilde leaned forward to stare at Raimond, eyes fierce. “You can’t just have given up!”

“I searched for Gilbert for two years. Two years, Matilde! But the air might as well have swallowed him up for all the traces we found.” Raimond gestured helplessly. “A man can only live on hope so long. I can only guess that Thibault, in his madness, murdered my brother.”

“Ah, Thibault,” Hauberin murmured. “How is he?”

Raimond’s brows raised. “Why, dead, my lord, for nearly these ten years. He died quite insane, they say—”

“Ah.”

“—and his lands reverted to Duke Alain.”

“Who was quick to cede you your brother’s lands,” Matilde snapped.

“Whom I did not even ask for my brother’s lands,” Raimond corrected, eyes grim, “till after those two years were past. Dammit, Matilde—your pardon, gentles—I might have been a young idiot back then, but I loved my brother! It . . . wasn’t until after I’d lost him that I realized how much I loved him.”

“But you don’t know Gilbert’s dead,” Matilde insisted. “You have no proof.”

“It’s been ten years, Matilde,” Raimond said gently. “Ten years without a word. Surely that’s proof enough, even in the eyes of the Church.”

“Meaning that I’m a widow by default? Because my husband’s somehow been—misplaced? I can’t accept that.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say. Look you, you needn’t worry; my wife and I—”

“Wife?”

“Ah, you wouldn’t know. Margit, Lady Margit of—”

“Duke Alain’s cousin?” Matilde asked wryly. ‘You
have
done well for yourself, haven’t you?”

“Yes—no—never mind that. Matilde, there will always be a place for you here with us.”

“As what? A curiosity, not-widow, not-wife? A pensioner, like some poor, witless old crone? No, thank you.” But then Matilde’s voice softened. “I know you’re trying to be kind. But I won’t take your charity.”

“Well then, if you’d rather enter a nunnery, I could—”

“Oh, please. We both know I don’t have the temperament for that.”

“But what else is there? You can’t just go wandering the roads! Matilde, as your husband’s brother I’m responsible for you.”

“No. Raimond, don’t ask me where I’ve been, because I won’t answer you.” The man’s glance flicked from her to, disapprovingly, Hauberin and Alliar and back again. “But this I will say: after all I’ve done and seen, I’m not the woman I was. I’ve learned no one is responsible for me
but
me.”

“But . . . where will you go?”

Matilde turned to Hauberin and Alliar. “My lords, I imagine you are still heading towards Touranne? Yes? Then, if you will have me, I’ll go with you.”
Don’t turn me down,
her eyes pleaded,
I
have no other hope.
“Perhaps there I can learn my husband’s fate.”

Following her formal lead, Hauberin bowed in his chair. “Of course you are welcome, lady.”

“But—but you can’t!” Raimond stammered. “It isn’t right, it isn’t proper . . .” The prince glanced his way but said nothing, and after an awkward moment, the man began carefully, “My Lord Hauberin, when first we met we weren’t exactly on amicable terms. If I offended you back then, pray forgive me. I . . . wasn’t always myself.”

Because Serein had been controlling him? Or was it that Serein’s mysterious ally had been controlling him through Serein, supposing that mysterious ally existed—Ach, nonsense, this train of thought was getting far too complicated. Hauberin glanced at Raimond, reminding himself that as far as the human was concerned, it really had been ten years, and dipped his head courteously. “I take it you . . .
are
yourself these days?” he asked, wryly mimicking the man’s voice. “Yes? Then let there be peace between us.”

Raimond leaned forward in his seat, murmuring so only Hauberin could hear. “Then you . . . won’t really let her go with you?”

“Why, my Lord Raimond.” Hauberin sat back with a smile. ‘You heard the lady: I am most certainly not her keeper.”

###

“I hardly expected this,” Hauberin murmured to Matilde as they and Alliar rode along the forest road, trailed by half a dozen mounted soldiers.

“I didn’t either,” she whispered. “The old Raimond would have thrown you into prison and me into a nunnery and tossed the key away. He really has changed in . . . can it really be ten years . . . ?”

But Hauberin turned in the saddle at the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats. “Ah, Aimery. And his own escort.”

The young man reined his horse in beside them, saluting them cheerfully. “I must follow this road myself if I’m to get home. I didn’t think you’d mind if we rode together for a bit.”

Hauberin smiled, seeing traces of the friendly boy beneath the man. “Of course not.” He glanced at the patently expensive clothing, and added, “No more Squire Aimery, I take it.”

“No, my lord. I earned my knighthood some years back, in service to good Duke Alain after . . . after Baron Gilbert . . . disappeared. I’m sorry, my lady.”

“So am I,” she murmured.

Aimery glanced warily at Hauberin. “I suspect I know where you’ve been sheltering,” he said softly. “In your homeland, am I right? Ha, I am! That’s the only way ten years could have passed by without touching you. Don’t worry; I shan’t tell anyone. Ah well,” Aimery added, a little too loudly, “here’s the fork in the road that leads to my own estate. I must say farewell.”

But he leaned forward in the saddle as though to adjust a stirrup and murmured, “Be careful, my lord. Baron Raimond isn’t ready to give up. The guards are meant to overwhelm you while you sleep and bring you back to his castle as abductors of the lady. He thinks you . . . ah . . . bespelled Baroness Matilde.”

“Does he now? How very discourteous of him.”

Aimery hesitated. “You . . . didn’t . . .” He glanced from Hauberin to the wryly amused Matilde and shook his head. “No. Of course you didn’t. My lords, my lady, I must leave now. All will be well with you?”

He looked so much like the earnest boy he’d been that Hauberin said with genuine warmth, “Yes, thanks to you. Aimery, you are something I never thought to find in these lands: a friend. Powers go with you.

“And . . . uh . . . with you.”

With a wave of his hand, Aimery and his men rode off.

Hauberin and Alliar exchanged sly glances, touching minds, the same idea occurring to both of them.

“It seems that our dear Raimond hasn’t changed all
that
much,”
the prince said.

“And here I was wondering why the guards kept eyeing you nervously, oh great and fearsome sorcerer.”
Alliar laughed.
“What a pity Power is so restricted here; how wonderfully we could entertain them.”

“Tsk, Li, you don’t want to terrify the poor things; they’re only hirelings.”

“A shame we must leave them so soon.”

“Indeed.”

“You’re sure you can . . . ?”

“Oh, yes.”

As they rode into the heart of the day, the air warm and soft about them, resonant with the thrumming of insects, six bemused guards found themselves, one by one, overwhelmed by the urge to sleep.

“The weather is so mild,” the prince purred, “just right for a nap. Perhaps,” he suggested smoothly, “we should stop for a rest.”

Yes,” a man murmured. “Rest.”

The guards slipped from the saddles, just barely remembering to tie up their horses. As the last of the men drifted off into slumber, Hauberin leaned back against a tree, worn but grinning. Persuasion spells were simple things to manage, even in this Realm—he’d proved that on his last visit—but they did take energy, particularly when they were worked one right after another. Absently rubbing his healing arm over the protective bandages (it must be healing; it itched enough for that), the prince watched as Matilde and Alliar moved softly from horse to horse, cutting the lead ropes.

The guards woke with a start at the sound of hoofbeats. But there wasn’t much they could do save watch and swear at the sight of their quarry—and all the horses—galloping off towards Touranne.

###

Hauberin awoke with a jolt, sitting bolt upright, heart pounding with terror. But after a time it came to him that he
was
awake, safe for the moment, and buried his face in his hands. Powers, Powers, with each repetition of the dream he came just a little closer to the end of that corridor, to that final, terrible revelation. And he knew, with a quiet, dreadful certainty, that if he reached it, he would die.

If he didn’t died of exhaustion first. Or frustration. If only there was some swift way to travel in this cursedly magickless Realm! But no, they were limited to a horse’s pace. And you couldn’t push a horse too hard, or the poor beast would die, and your journey would be even longer—

Oh, Powers!

They had been travelling now towards Touranne for five days, eating whatever small game the predator-quick Alliar could catch and whatever berries the foraging-wise Matilde could find, camping each night around the small fire Hauberin would light with his will. It should have, the prince thought wearily, been a peaceful, almost idyllic time.

At least the dream didn’t come every night. Oh no, that would be too simple. Lately, as though a master torturer had devised the curse (too subtle a thing for Serein, surely?), there had been days among the five when he was quite nightmare-free—but anticipation of horror was leaving his sleep increasingly broken and unrefreshing, and his nerves so tight Hauberin thought he would almost have welcomed an attack by tangible foes.

A faint, repetitive sound made him tense. Alliar? No. The being was off somewhere in the forest, hunting or just listening to the wind. Matilde, though, was weeping in her sleep, quietly and hopelessly, and a little pang stabbed through Hauberin. Ah, the poor, brave woman! The prince didn’t waste time in self-blame; he knew there hadn’t been any way to make the Realm-crossing spell more precise. It was a marvel they’d come as close to time and place as they had, and a mystery still unsolved why Matilde hadn’t seemed to age even slightly. But she had lost everything: husband, home, even her proper time . . .

He crouched at her side, looking down at her helplessly, aching to comfort her but not knowing how, aching to stroke the long, flame-beautiful hair, aching to touch her . . .